It's Prerelease weekend for Kaladesh, and this is the thread to discuss your experience. How did you do? What was your pool/draft like? What cards surprised you? How many trains did you get hit by? Gremlins???

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Personally, I did something this Prerelease that I don't normally do: I actually went. I haven't found the last few sets particularly interesting, but Kaladesh's combination of great worldbuilding, fun mechanics, and creative design pulled me in. The last set to excite me this much was Return to Ravnica.

So off I went to a local event for Kaladesh Sealed. I ended up with a deck that I thought looked weak, but ended up way better than expected. I somehow managed to go 4-0 with it, mostly due to a string of opponents with even worse decks than mine. It's a complicated format.

-I won my final game by stealing a Aradara Express, which I then piloted with a barge piloted by a monitor. Lizard pirate trainjacking!-One of my opponents cast Lost Legacy on himself, stripping three copies of some random common out of his deck, because he misread it and thought he drew a card for each. So close, pal.-The Thriving creatures are really good.-The little papercraft Thopter is a pain in the *** to assemble. Also, the little boxes the Prerelease packs came in were neat.-Contrary to what I had expected, I ended up giving my Fabricate creatures counters more often than I made Servos. Typically, it was because I wanted a creature that could hold the board without trading. My deck also didn't have that many ways to take advantage of random 1/1 dorks.-Kaladesh limited is fun and you should play it.

- Went 4-1* and finished in 3rd place in a field of 37*.(*technically 3-1 plus a first round bye, but to kill time during the first round I played against another player whose opponent never showed, and won that match)- Played BW Control (Fabricate-Artificers, blink, removal). The tournament champion, who I lost to in round 4, also played BW control.- Prerelease promo was a Fumigate. I feel naturally compelled to actually play my promo, and this was no exception. It was without question my all-star card of the day.- I also tend to play bomb mythics, but the Verdurous Gearhulk I opened in a pool where the rest of the green was garbage and I didn't have nearly enough fixing to splash for it, sucked.- I had more vehicles-matter cards in my pool (3) than actual vehicles (2). Had I opened two more vehicles I probably would have played RW vehicles.- I had one match where I won 2-0, where I played my Fumigate in both games, and so did my opponent. 4 Fumigates cast in a 2 game match.- I had two rare 'sweepers' in my deck, but while the Fumigate made numerous appearances throughout the day, I never even drew my Eliminate the Competition until my twelfth and final game of the day, when its casting (I sac Weaponcraft Enthusiast and two servos to take out all three possible blockers for my two relevant creatures) immediately led to a swing-for-the-win.- Won 7 packs as prizes. The most valuable card in any of my 7 prize packs was worth $1.75. - Between pool and prizing, I wound up with three rares in duplicate - two copies each of Midnight Oil, Ghirapur Orrery, and Kambal, Consul of Allocation. The two Kambals were in consecutive prize packs, the others each appeared once in pool and unplayed, and once in prizes. - I saw no trains but lots of Sky Skiffs, some Ovalchase Dragsters, and a Smuggler's Copter.- My 15th sealed event.- My 15th consecutive sealed pool without a planeswalker.- One opponent had a Solemn Simulacrum. Didn't draw it against me though.- Killed a Chandra with a Servo.- Pool rares: Saheeli's Artistry, Verdurous Gearhulk, Ghirapur Orrery, Midnight Oil, Fumigate, Eliminate the Competition, and Inspiring Vantage (the latter of which I traded for a Blooming Marsh immediately post-event).

Last edited by thatmarkguy on Sat Sep 24, 2016 9:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Link to the source of must bugs reported for online videogames, might be useful to check if the game you are playing is implementing this dangerous, buggy feature able to massively tilt the game in the AI favor and report it to the devs, or just to know about it and avoid implementing it if you are a dev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation

Most notable sideboard card to maindeck was probably the second riparian tiger, felt that I wanted more flyers, early drops and ways to close the game over it.Revoke privileges+ aviary mechanic was a pretty good interaction.

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Useful link:

Spoiler

Link to the source of must bugs reported for online videogames, might be useful to check if the game you are playing is implementing this dangerous, buggy feature able to massively tilt the game in the AI favor and report it to the devs, or just to know about it and avoid implementing it if you are a dev: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_number_generation

I also brewed B/W and played it a couple games, but I think the build was better. Neither of them really won though.

Format is fast. The sooner you can establish board, the more of an advantage you have. Stabilizing takes insane effort -- I lost match 1, playing , when my controlly opponent had 2 copies of Aetherstorm Roc in the deck, reliably getting one with Fabrication Module (and both my losses games Decoction Module too...) -- and usually some of Whirlermaker, Master trinketeer and/or Angel of Invention I lost playing against opponents who could just output pressure -- because decks curve really efficiently with both good early beaters and good fat, I couldn't pull out of the spiral without something insane like Roc Counters

Best play by me: I'm playing and my opponent has been feeding Bastion Mastodon chump blockers for a while. Opponent plays Combustible Gearhulk. Being at 20 I elect to take damage, he flips up a 2-mana burn spell, a land, and his chandra planeswalker so I take 6 and there goes the PW. On my turn, the Tidy Conclusion I was holding lives up to its name, sweeping away the Gearhulk and getting me a nice fraction of that life back.

(I had a barely-slightly rotating sideboard, and I didn't start Sky Skiff in early matches but subbed it in for a Fragmentize or a Revoke Priveleges, first based on whether my opponent had artifact threats or bounce+blink synergy, then eventually ran Sky Skiff by default over Fragmentize)

Third prerelease in a row at this store that I've won... I like this store. The format is a lot of fun and quite fast; most of my opponents weren't prepared to deal with creatures that attack for 3 or 4 starting on turn 3. Chandra's Pyrohelix was amazing.

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"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded." — Terry Pratchett

Nearly every set made for a long time has included what I call a tempo-smoothing keyword. Something that lets you vary the amount of mana you put into a card so the card can be a good draw early or late. Kicker being the most clear example, but morph, flashback, evoke, emerge, bestow, etc. This set doesn't have one. Energy, vehicles, and fabricate all give you choices about how you use your cards, but none of them are tied to mana.

Can you sense this during the gameplay? Does it seem harder to make plays on curve, or like decks just run out of gas if the game goes long, or some other perception you have?

garbage3-1 3rd place was ok3-0 2HG that was good4-1 5th place missed prizes, couldn't even solomon and lost to one of those out of the woodworks come play new set players where you get real salty cause you lost and counted all the mis plays, and they don't even realize your off a color, . you just shake and congratulate. and walk outside

Energy runs so very smoothly, and despite having made some awful mistakes while drafting (passed a Malfunction for a second Freighter, for example, which in retrospect I wish I hadn't done), I am 2-0 so far. This set is very fun.

Faced a lot of aggro and didn't draw well against it. Oviya is a damn bomb...as is Architect. Each won me a game. The deck had no trouble generating energy, but a little 1/1 kept shutting me down long enough for . Life gain was pretty important.

I barely lost in game two vs another b/r deck. Got them to 1 (while at 13) the first game and didn't draw anything, then got them to 3 (while at 20) and drew lands forever. Weldfast has been great every time I've seen it played. Dragster dies to everything. Daredevil is an AWESOME combo with Express. Artist is pretty decent and usually acted as a deal 3 which drove vehicles afterward. Dhund is a friggin workhorse. Bomat was incredible...even though I never got to get the cards, it was awesome. I swapped in scrutiny against a r/w aggro deck that started a bit later and finished harder...it's a solid card.

I don't think I like League...feels like it negatively affects common draft techniques...like you might be able to meta-draft. Also annoyed me to consistently see the Legends I played played by my opponent.

On balance, I think leagues have enough upside for me to outwiegh the slight downside of not playing in-pool matches. You can draft today, play tomorrow, or change your deck between drafts, or think about the last three cards for an hour. But the best thing is, no waiting between rounds for the control player to finish their match. If you want, you finish your match, hit play, and are paired again in a minute or sooner (for the current format 6-2-2-2).

I'm not sure what you mean by meta-drafting. Actually, hate-drafting now evidently makes no sense, and forcing (which is what I think of when you say meta-drafting) is unaffected, maybe a bit easier because of no hate drafting. At least, that's how it should work. You always get people who don't know what they are doing, or sometimes a person with connection problems, or a rare-drafter.

I feel like league play encourages drafting decks well situated against the most popular and/or best builds. So yeah, basically talking about forcing, but there feels like theres a new potential element to it. Haven't quite figured out what I mean yet. Maybe it's because I've seen so much red...and specifically r/b. And yeah, hate drafting is nothing but a troll move now...which opens up another problem...someone screwing up your draft is far more crippling than if everyone was suffering from the same pool.

And I don't know if this is this particular set or another symptom of league play, but my commons seems far more powerful in this format than my rares.

The pluses you noted for league play are all nice, but it comes down to sacrificing strategic knowledge and positioning for convenience.

I felt I have a weak pool, with no mythics, no Renegade Freighter, a single Impeccable Timing and Harnessed Lightning for removal. I met a player with Dynavolt Tower, three Live Fast, at least two Die Young. A player with Combustible Gearhulk (which hit me for 2, 1, 2 and 5 damage in the three games we played); but a 6/6 first striker is extremely hard to deal with when your deck is planning to win using combat tricks. However, I'm 3-0 so far, after three very tight matches. two of which came down to topdecking in game three; I might as well had been 0-3.

Leagues for me are a godsend. My schedule is a complete mess and I barely have time for anything, so being able to draft and play the games at my choosing was a really big part in me actually beginning to play Magic again. I get that not playing in the same pool has its downsides, but to me they are so marginal in comparison to actually getting to play at all.

In other news, went 3-0 with that deck I posted above. The commons and uncommons that routinely got me two or three energy at ETB were all important and the occasional win out of nowhere with Nissa helped too.

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